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Saturday, December 24. 2011

Three years with magnetic implants

I always seem to remember a few days after... but the 22nd of this December marked the three year anniversary since I had tiny neodymium magnets implanted into the middle and ring fingers of my left hand in my attempt to explore and develop a new type of human-machine interface for my masters degree work.

Unlike the previous years which were uneventful, this year, a few months ago, I developed some discomfort and slight pain in my ring finger when I accidently applied too much sharp pressure on the area and upset the implant. It was the first time in three years that I had any sort of trouble from the implant. Luckily the internal wounds healed in a few days and the pain subsided. Below is an X-ray image of the implant I got done a few months ago and it looks like it is still safely tucked in where it was originally placed!

At the beginning of this year, I had set out to develop a smaller, less intrusive version of the external interface I had developed earlier with the goal of exploring the effects of wearing the interface for an extended period of time - 24 hours a day 7 days a week for 3 months. I did get around to hacking up a tiny interface package that I can wear as a ring on my finger. Sadly, for too many excuses and what not, I didn't get around to actually getting on with that bit of research.

So, here's to me actually getting on with wearing the new interface for three months beginning 2012. Fingers crossed!


X-ray image of the ring finger from a few months ago.


New, smaller, ring-sized external interface.

Posted by Jaa at 19:12 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)
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Tuesday, February 22. 2011

ZOHO Viewer plugin for jQuery

I discovered ZOHO Viewer, which supports a lot more file types than Google Docs Viewer, after I wrote the Google Docs Viewer jQuery plugin I posted earlier. So, I wrote another jQuery plugin that automatically embeds the ZOHO viewer for viewing the doc, docx, xls, xlsx, ppt, pptx, pps, odt, ods, odp, sxw, sxc, sxi, wpd, pdf, rtf, txt, html, csv, tsv files it supports linked to by anchor tags.

The ZOHO Viewer is an embeddable browser-based viewer that requires only a URL to a file available online. This, just like Google Docs Viewer, bypasses the need for users to have compatible software on their machines for those file types and displays the document right in the browser.

Both plugins work exactly the same and has the same configuration options. I ended up going back to Google Docs Viewer for the application I was developing because it displays the document zoomed in to fit the width of the viewer by default and has a toolbar to help navigate the document unlike ZOHO viewer. However, because ZOHO Viewer supports a much large range of file types it is still likely to become very handy.

Usage


1. Add jQuery and the zohoViewer plugin to the page.
<head>
<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.zohoviewer.min.js"></script>
</head>

2. Set some class name or id to the anchor tag for all URLs to files that you want to be displayed using the ZOHO Viewer. E.g. "embed"
<a href="urltofile.pdf" class="embed">Download file</a>
<a href="urltofile.pdf" id="embedURL">Download file</a>

3. Initialize zohoViewer and set it to process the URL with id or all URLs with the class name set in the previous step.
$('a.embed').zohoViewer();
$('#embedURL').zohoViewer();

Customization


The plugin offers two configuration options that set the width and height of the embedded document IFRAME. This can be set when the plugin is initialized.
$('a.embed').zohoViewer({ width: 400, height: 500 });

The plugin inserts a the IFRAME for the viewer inside an injected DIV. The DIV tags all carry the class name "zohoviewer", which allow for styling all the zohoViewer instances via CSS. If the anchor tag has the ID attribute defined, then the injected DIV tag is also set an ID attribute in the format of ID_of_Anchor + '-zohoviewer'. See the demo source code for more details.

Demo


- Check out the live demonstration

License

This script is released under the Open Source MIT License, allowing its use in both personal and commercial applications as long as the copyright and license permission notice remains intact.

Download

- jquery.zohoviewer.v1.0.zip (v1.0, 2.2KB)

Enjoy!
Posted by Jaa at 17:41 | Comments (7) | Trackbacks (6)
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Monday, February 21. 2011

Google Docs Viewer plugin for jQuery

Here's a little jQuery plugin I wrote recently that automatically embeds the Google Docs Viewer for viewing pdf, doc, docx, ppt and tiff files linked to by anchor tags.

The Google Docs Viewer is an embeddable browser-based viewer that requires only a URL to a file available online. This neatly bypasses the need for users to have compatible software on their machines for those file types and displays the document right in the browser.

Usage


1. Add jQuery and the gDocsViewer plugin to the page.
<head>
<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.gdocsviewer.min.js"></script>
</head>

2. Set some class name or id to the anchor tag for all URLs to files that you want to be displayed using the Google Docs Viewer. E.g. "embed"
<a href="urltofile.pdf" class="embed">Download file</a>
<a href="urltofile.pdf" id="embedURL">Download file</a>

3. Initialize gDocsViewer and set it to process the URL with id or all URLs with the class name set in the previous step.
$('a.embed').gdocsViewer();
$('#embedURL').gdocsViewer();

Customization


The plugin offers two configuration options that set the width and height of the embedded document IFRAME. This can be set when the plugin is initialized.
$('a.embed').gdocsViewer({ width: 400, height: 500 });

The plugin inserts a the IFRAME for the viewer inside an injected DIV. The DIV tags all carry the class name "gdocsviewer", which allow for styling all the gdocsViewer instances via CSS. If the anchor tag has the ID attribute defined, then the injected DIV tag is also set an ID attribute in the format of ID_of_Anchor + '-gdocsviewer'. See the demo source code for more details.

Demo


- Check out the live demonstration

License

This script is released under the Open Source MIT License, allowing its use in both personal and commercial applications as long as the copyright and license permission notice remains intact.

Download

- jquery.gdocsviewer.v1.0.zip (v1.0, 2.2KB)

Enjoy!
Posted by Jaa at 18:00 | Comments (8) | Trackbacks (7)
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Friday, February 18. 2011

Thaana Text Render class for PHP 5 - v1.0

A (long) while back, I demoed a Thaana text rendering class for PHP I had written years ago that dynamically converts any given Thaana text into a formatted image of given dimensions with configuration options for important properties like font, font size and color. I am now releasing it, slightly improved, publicly for developers to use it in their applications.

Overview

The rationale for the class was that the use of images to display Thaana means that the information can be viewed on a large variety of devices and does away with the requirement for the device to support Thaana fonts. It can also be used for any purpose that requires dynamically generating an image with Thaana text in it, for example watermarking images or nice headings with your Thaana font of choice.

The class makes use of the powerful image manipulation services provided by the GD library to create images from text and hence inherits the wide range of features it offers. However, since the GD library does not support right-to-left scripts and does not offer line wrapping to fit text within a bounding box, the class requires the use of non-Unicode Thaana fonts and non-Unicode Thaana text. You can make use of my Thaana conversions class for PHP to dynamically convert Unicode Thaana text to ASCII Thaana text before passing it to this class for rendering.

Functions exposed

- render()
- renderImage()
- setFontPath()
- setFont()
- setFontSize()
- setTextColor()
- setTextLineSpacing()
- setBgColor()
- setShadow()

Requirements

- PHP 5
- GD for PHP

Usage


The class is well commented so have a look through the code for more details on the functions and their arguments.

The class takes ASCII Thaana text and an optional width, filename, filetype for the render functions. The render() function returns a handle that can be used with the PHP image functions for further processing if required. The renderImage() allows the output to be returned directly or saved to a file.

If the width is specified, the resultant image will be constraint to that width and text will be wrapped around and split into lines as appropriate. Specify either "gif", "png" or "jpg" for the class to save the rendered output. If the filename is omitted, then it will return the output directly.

The class will accept any HTML/CSS color specification (i.e. "#FFF000", "red", "rgb(127, 127, 127)") as a valid color for use as text color, background color and shadow color. You can also specify alpha values to accompany them in order to have transparency effects. Set the background alpha to 127 to produce text on a transparent background.

All fonts have to be placed in the font path directory and should be named, in lower case, exactly as the font names passed to the class.

Examples


Saving to a file:
This example shows how to render the text and save the output. It sets all the properties for font, background and shadows at object initialization. The renderImage() function has the filename and filetype specified for saving the rendered output.
<?php
// Load the class
include('thaanaTextRender.php');

// Initialize object
$ttr = new ThaanaTextRender('./fonts/', 'a_waheed', 20, 'white', 0, 50, 'rgb(0,0,0)', 0, 2, '#555555', 80);

// Render image and save output
$ttr->renderImage('swaincsc', 300, 'output.png', 'png');


Output directly to browser:
This example is ideal for use in scripts that dynamically generate the required rendering and return the output directly to the browser.
<?php
// Load the class
include('thaanaTextRender.php');

// Initialize object
$ttr = new ThaanaTextRender('./fonts/', 'a_waheed', 16, 'white', 0, 50, 'rgb(0,0,0)', 127);

// Render image and save output
$ttr->renderImage('gUgulunc aepwlc awaimUvIaW vWdwkurW kwhwlw aeve. gUgulc aencDcroaiDc fOnutwkwSc mihWru vwnI mUvI scTUDiaOaeac dIfw aeve.', 300, NULL, 'png');


You could use it by, for example, calling it via the image tag.
<img src="script.php" />


Demo

You can check out the original demo I posted to see it in action.

For a real-world application of the class, check out the Muraasil mobile site which has been making good use of it for almost 2 years now.

License

This script is released under the Open Source MIT License, allowing its use in both personal and commercial applications as long as the copyright and license permission notice remains intact.

Download

- ThaanaTextRender.zip (v1.0, 4.43KB)

Enjoy!
Posted by Jaa at 00:53 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0)
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Saturday, June 19. 2010

Magnetic implant X-ray

I finally got around to digitizing the X-ray image I took of the magnetic implants I have in the fingers of my left hand. The image below shows the location of the implanted disc magnet within the pad of the ring finger.

Posted by Jaa at 08:14 | Comments (6) | Trackback (1)
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Saturday, January 23. 2010

Magnetic implants: Implantation video

It has been a year and a month since I had a tiny magnet implanted into the middle and ring fingers of my left hand as a central part of my MEng research project in which I was exploring a novel man-machine interface based on these subdermal magnetic implants. The magnets are still in there, safe and sound and still allowing me to "feel" magnetic fields everywhere around me - like around wires, washing machines, microwaves, ATMs, supermarket checkouts, power supplies, hard disks, fans etc. The research is still continuing as we now have another student at the University of Reading Cybernetics department who has gotten the same implants and are providing a second set of data on the properties of the interface.

Anyway, I wanted to share the video of the implantation procedure (blood-filled as it maybe) just posted on YouTube by Mac McCarthy who had performed the procedure on me. The doctors at the university medical practice had refused to do the procedure due to safety and insurance concerns so I had had to find an alternative means of getting the magnets implanted. It took a fair bit digging and looking around before I found Mac's Punctured Body Modification shop. I was slightly nervous at the start since it was the first time that Mac was attempting to perform a procedure of the kind but luckily everything went quite smoothly. It was an interesting experience; sitting in a chair, watching keenly as my fingers were cut, probed, magnet shoved in and incision stitched while blood oozed out...


Yes, that is my hand!
Posted by Jaa at 12:38 | Comments (3) | Trackbacks (11)
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Thursday, June 11. 2009

Thaana text rendering: A solution for devices without the required fonts

A few years ago I wrote a PHP-based Thaana text rendering class while investigating solutions to the problem of displaying Thaana text in web browsers on various devices. The class dynamically converts any given Thaana text into a formatted image of given dimensions and type. The use of images to display Thaana means that the information can be viewed on a large variety of devices and does away with the demand for the device to support Thaana fonts. On the flip side, the use of images does mean that this approach has higher bandwidth and data transfer requirements than text.

Features

The class makes use of the powerful image manipulation services provided by the GD library to create images from text and hence inherits the wide of features it offers. However, since the GD library does not (or atleast did not, back then) support right-to-left scripts and does not offer line wrapping to fit text within a bounding box, custom code had to be written to handle the unsupported text direction and formatting. The class also supports use of any Thaana font, made possible by GD support for loading TrueType fonts.

Applications

This piece of code was briefly put to live use around 2004 on the (now defunct) MUnet.net's Radheef service. More recently, it has been put to great use by Muraasil.com to display Thaana on their mobile service so that user's can read news in Thaana on mobile devices, including Windows Mobile-based phones and the iPhone.

Demo

Give it a go and play around: Thaana text rendering demo.

I am not releasing the code publicly just yet...
Posted by Jaa at 21:19 | Comments (11) | Trackback (1)
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